Business Design: From Observing Customers to Small Tests and Review

Business design is more than forecasting profit

In this lesson, Mostafa Nezamparvar discusses the need for a plan when starting a business, but does not treat a plan as a firm promise about the future. His premise is that conditions and outcomes may differ from initial expectations, so the plan must allow for testing and revision.

In this view, a business model is not merely a statement about future income. It should clarify which activities will be performed, in what order, for which customer, and how they can be repeated and their results examined. The video focuses on the initial steps of designing this process.

Start by observing customers and their actual behavior

The proposed first step is contact with existing customers or people who may buy. The educator recommends observing how they buy, sell and negotiate, and what they want. The aim is to avoid building the initial business picture solely from the idea owner’s imagination.

At the end of this stage, you have an initial interpretation of the customer’s behavioral pattern. It is not yet a definitive conclusion about all customers. Treat it as a picture formed through observation and conversation, open to examination in later stages.

Share your interpretation with others

After observation, the educator suggests discussing the picture formed with several other people. They may be colleagues in the same group or people outside it. Discussion helps clarify assumptions and reveal possible misunderstandings.

The talk identifies thinking alone and remaining confined to one’s own assumptions as sources of error. Others’ views may reveal something missed in the initial observation or help develop the idea more precisely.

This does not mean every outside opinion is necessarily correct. The central point is to open the plan to examination and questions.

Before implementation, you should be able to explain what behavior you observed and how you interpreted it. Separating these helps ensure discussion is not merely about enthusiasm for an idea; the initial interpretation itself also receives scrutiny.

Proceed with a small test and available resources

The next step is to create small experiments. In the educator’s explanation, their outcomes provide information that clarifies the next decision. Instead of treating every future detail as certain from the outset, implement part of the work to see the actual result.

He advises against postponing the start until conditions are completely ideal. Begin with what is actually available, on a manageable scale, and develop gradually.

This does not mean starting without thought or ignoring customer needs; observation and discussion come before this stage.

The video gives no numerical method for setting test size or budget. “Small test” therefore cannot imply a fixed amount, duration or order volume for every business. The action must be small enough to implement and assess in practice.

Review the plan after implementation

Uncertainty does not disappear once a path has been designed and testing begins. The educator notes that even a structure developed through observation and consultation may not work as expected in practice. Examine the outcome and remain open to changing course.

An iterative process becomes important here: act, examine the result and revise the plan accordingly.

The aim of design is not to create an unchangeable plan, but to clarify a way of working whose performance can be assessed and improved.

The lecture concludes with this sequence:

The sequence of design and testing

1. Observe the customer,
2. Form a picture of their behavior,
3. Discuss your ideas with others,
4. Carry out a simple part of the work with available resources
5. And return to review.

The video does not explain the later stages in detail; the educator leaves them for the rest of the training series.

About this talk

This article was prepared and rewritten from the automatic Persian captions of Mostafa Nezamparvar’s lesson in the video on this page; it is not a word-for-word transcript. Spoken analogies have been converted into direct explanations, and no tools, metrics or guaranteed outcomes absent from the session have been added.